<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Fighting Fate by holysansa</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947075">Fighting Fate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/holysansa/pseuds/holysansa'>holysansa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, I'm tired and I don't know how to tag this</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:47:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/holysansa/pseuds/holysansa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Until Jamie, Dani didn't think that she could ever truly be happy. And now that they have each other, Dani is willing to fight to hold onto that happiness.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>430</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fighting Fate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I just really wanted them to have a happy ending and that's all, so here we are. I wrote this super late/early and I'm not too sure everything is accurate, but at least they're happy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dani had never thought that a lifetime of peace and happiness was attainable for her. She had <em>tried</em> to attain it, to fight against the odds that fate had placed before her. But she had always seemed to be fighting it in the wrong way. Or, rather, fate knew every step she would take before she took it. And fate wouldn’t let her win.</p><p>She had tried to force happiness out of her relationship with Eddie. She thought that loving him in the way she had would be enough, but it hadn’t been. And when she tried to fix it, to set things right, she had lost. She lost him and she had lost any semblance of peace and happiness that she had hoped for.</p><p>And running from the guilt of that loss didn’t find her happiness either. Not for a long time. Not until Jamie.</p><p>Jamie was the peace she had been searching for, what she had almost given up hope for. Jamie’s green thumb seemed to press against Dani’s tired heart, helping it to finally beat the way it was supposed to. Her heart beat towards the light Jamie brought into her life, and Dani felt the warmth of contentment branching through her veins, rising up to flush her skin when Jamie touched her.</p><p>She loved Jamie. More than anyone. Every moment with Jamie was beauty, each moment more beautiful than the next. Maybe this was because, after everything that had happened at Bly Manor, after Dani’s body wasn’t really hers anymore, every moment was stolen.</p><p>“So why can’t we take it all back?” Jamie had pleaded stubbornly, desperately.</p><p>“How?” Dani felt that dense, dark jungle path surrounding her. Even if Jamie was a light in the darkness, the light couldn’t stop the predator she had invited to live inside her.</p><p>“There has to be a way,” Jamie said. “After everything we’ve been through, after all the shit we’ve seen… I know there’s something we can do.”</p><p>“I don’t know, Jamie…”</p><p>“Your life doesn’t deserve to stop because of this. There’s more we can do.”</p><p>Maybe it was the gardener in Jamie that made her view the presence inside of Dani as an invasive species, one that could be uprooted. And maybe it was because Dani so dearly wanted to hold onto Jamie for as long as she could that she let her search for a solution.</p><p>She didn’t expect her to find one.</p><p>“Exorcism,” Jamie said one day. She said it so confidently, so clearly.</p><p>“Exorcism?” The thought had crossed Dani’s mind once, but she dismissed it into the black hopelessness of things she couldn’t let herself dwell on. “How can I exorcise something that I invited in?”</p><p>“Your house, your rules. We’re getting that bitch evicted.”</p><p>And so they searched for someone to help, someone willing to take on that old, faceless spirit biding its time in Dani’s body. Dani wasn’t really sure that she should do this. She didn’t know if she should try fighting against something like this, something that felt fated.</p><p>But Jamie found someone. He was a priest in a small village and it had taken Jamie weeks to make sense of the leads she had dug up on him. But she had found him. And when she found him, she brought Dani to him.</p><p>To be honest, Dani couldn’t remember much about the actual exorcism. She wasn’t sure she’d <em>want</em> to remember most of it, even if she could. But there were parts she did remember.</p><p>She remembered the smell of incense, the unbearable coldness of fear and uncertainty. She remembered holding onto the Jamie-shaped light, focusing on that above the blackness and the sea of dread. The spirit hadn’t wanted to leave her—after all, she had been invited in. But it turned out that Dani wanted her to leave more. And she fought. She fought harder than she ever had.</p><p>And then it was done.</p><p>There was a strange emptiness in Dani as she awoke the day after the exorcism—or maybe it had been more than a day, she couldn’t remember. But she remembered feeling that emptiness as she opened her eyes to see the sun peaking through the curtains of the bedroom she was in.</p><p>The emptiness was incredible.</p><p>It was as if she had been backpacking for years, her pack filled with nothing but bricks. And then someone had come along and emptied it for her. She was unburdened. She could walk so easily now, she felt like she could handle any terrain she came upon.</p><p>And of course, Jamie was there too. She was next to her as she awoke, unburdened, full of light. Dani cried as she looked at Jamie that morning. Dani always knew she was brave, but she didn’t know how much more brave she could be because of Jamie.</p><p>Dani’s body was hers again and she could grow old in it as Jamie grew old too. Someday they would die, but it wouldn’t be today. It wouldn’t be for years and years. And it wouldn’t be because of the dark spirit that was done tormenting not just Dani, but everyone else it had touched. It was utterly vanquished.</p><p>When Jamie and Dani went home together, to the home they had formed together, it was <em>just them</em>. It took Dani longer than she would’ve liked to finally be able to look at her reflection without fear of seeing someone else, but the fear did fade. The fear faded and her love for Jamie grew even more. There was so much more room inside Dani for love, for peace.</p><p>“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Dani said to her one night, curled up next to her in their warm bed.</p><p>“You’d be pretty fucked without me, Poppins,” Jamie teased. “But you know I wouldn’t want to imagine my life without you either. Not for a long time.”</p><p>Not a day went by that Dani wasn’t grateful for the way Jamie had nurtured her, the way she had fought for her. And she may not have been a gardener, but she knew how to help Jamie grow. And they grew their lives together.</p><p>Dani didn’t think this life with Jamie would have ever been possible, she didn’t think fate would let her have this. But fate had lost. Or maybe fate had never existed. Or maybe Dani was fated to find peace with Jamie.</p><p>Whether or not fate had anything to do with it, Dani was happy. And, finally, it would last a lifetime.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>